Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez Threatens the U.S. with Economic Terrorism
September 26th, 2009Some people may not like my headline. I don’t care. Make up your own headline, if you like. Call it whatever you want.
Barney Frank doesn’t want to rock the boat. Oh no. Appearances need to be maintained on the Ship of Fools.
Well, the only thing that’s certain is that the Ship of Fools is headed for oblivion. What’s not clear is how much time remains on the journey.
Via: Bloomberg:
Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez said audits of monetary policy by the U.S. Congress could lead to higher interest rates and reduced confidence in central bank policy.
Congressional audits of monetary policy could “cause the markets and the public to lose confidence in the independence of the judgments of the Federal Reserve,” Alvarez told the House Financial Services Committee today in response to a question from Representative Dennis Moore, a Kansas Democrat. Alvarez said in his prepared remarks the audits would probably “chill” the central bank’s discussions on interest rates.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues are trying to persuade lawmakers not to pass legislation sponsored by Representative Ron Paul of Texas that would repeal the central bank’s immunity to audits of monetary policy. Fed officials used emergency powers to protect creditors of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc. during the financial crisis, prompting congressional scrutiny.
“We don’t want to give the rest of the world or, more important, domestic investors the impression that we are somehow in a formal way injecting Congress into the setting of monetary policy,” said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the committee. “That could have a very destabilizing effect.”
Frank added that “a lot needs to be done” on Fed transparency and said that Congress can accomplish that without interfering with the independence of monetary policy decisions.
Research Credit: oelsen
sputter sputter… Frank added that “a lot needs to be done” on Fed transparency and said that Congress can accomplish that without interfering with the independence of monetary policy decisions. ‘interfering’?
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http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul370.html
Ron Paul:
‘Statement at Hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, February 15, 2007
Transparency in monetary policy is a goal we should all support. I’ve often wondered why Congress so willingly has given up its prerogative over monetary policy. Astonishingly, Congress in essence has ceded total control over the value of our money to a secretive central bank.’
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from http://amerexile.blogspot.com:
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution states the Congress shall have the power, To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.
i found that whole essay interesting, but the simple quote above is what’s pertinent in this comment. i say ‘simple’ but as mr. Transue goes on to point out, the wording is pointedly precise.
so, i’ve made my limited (and i hope obvious) point here and anything further i’d say digresses offtopic, but this is but the snowflake tip of the iceberg of how things are constitutionally transgressed. -The modern highway system, automobiles, and media, and now the net have fundamentally changed the republic beyond what even a proper congress, at it’s best, *could* represent. …Fixing a broken car that has driven into the ocean won’t make it a boat, dammit. I think we need a new constitution convention but there’s no way in hell it could be reasonably intelligently done nowadays, not with reason and intelligence being held so unamerican as they are… Witness here such as Barney Frank’s words. (does this count as swinging back ontopic?)
The single best treatise on societal collapse I’ve ever read was a little-known (yet epic) .pdf-only book called “The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age” by Marc Widdowson. I ran across a link to it about 4 or 5 years back, and fortunately printed it out (all 400+ pages!). For unknown reasons it then went AWOL anywhere online — not that you can’t find it, just that the .pdf’s you find are somehow now un-useably formatted. I have no idea why this happened. I always meant to write the author, but since I had a great copy I never felt the urgency.
Anyway, one of the main signs of societal collapse illustrated there was the slow disintegration of authority in the “power(s) that be”. This was the first signal of a society in decline. Widdowson posited that if you watch for this, you can un-erringly identify a “super-power in collapse”.
And that is certainly the major theme in almost every news story happening today….and this story spells out the very crux of the issue: it’s not simply “the USA” that’s declining as the most powerful actor in the world — that’s to be expected in the grand scope of things — it’s the Central Banks that are declining as a super-power. That, to me, signals the end of our present era.
Not that it will end amicably or quickly. But it’s happening nonetheless…
good summary, Kevin.
“if you audit us, interest rates might get higher”
sounds like a not-so-subtle mafia threat.
but these are not-nice people, playing for big stakes…
@ lagavulin:
found the book, but in several zip files, not the pdf. i haven’t opened the zips yet.
this blog post led me to the author’s site.
http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/
which holds a link (‘The Book’);
http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/Manuscript.htm
where the zip files lay.
http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/Book.htm
is a page holding a synopsis of the book.
thank you for mentioning it, looks interesting.
Some of Dr. Paul’s reasons for drawing the curtain (possibly) relate to the bullion and numismatic business he also manages. What would be the conflict here?
My question is, why is congress NOT involved in monetary policy? Instead we hand it over to private bankers where it becomes a black box. I thought it was separation of church and state, not separation of state and monetary policy. Never mind audit the fed, get rid of the damn thing altogether and give us our money back!
Uffa, no. Wasn’t me. “Reddit” found it and put it into politics. Thats what it is, pure politics. This has absolutely nothing to do with economics or monetary policy.
Today i heard a rant about the import of kitty litter into Switzerland. This market seems to be a collusive market and even the producers in Europe “cooperate” with our domestic retail. There is no way to get reasonably priced _kitty litter_ and we here get het up over money.
I agree with your headline Kevin, and I don’t think its not radical at all.
I’ve been an auditor in the US federal government for longer than I want to tell you, but when someone says, I SHOULD NOT BE AUDITED, its an Uh? and Duh? who in this world is exempt from an audit by anyone anymore? It’s called a RED FLAG in my book, that there is something called fraud, waste, and abuse going on.
Fer crying out loud, even the IRS gets its financial statements audited every year!
Audit me and You’ll die.
Right.
No, I think we will audit you and then you’ll be exposed as a criminal enterprise.
I’m all for THE AUDIT OF THE FED.
What do they have, a nuclear weapon that they are going to explode?
Well yes, surely, when the machinations of this deep dark club of bankers and investors who have had their payback every time a bubble is burst cause they can fix it meet their day, well, it ain’t going to be something pretty when it comes to light.
Not a report to read over breakfast. Pity all of the auditors who will suprisingly ( cough, spit, hoc) decide to commit suicide in droves. They were SO UNHAPPY before they started the audit!
If it there isn’t/wasn’t something the Fed was hiding, why the fluck are they so worked up?
RED FLAG!
We know here the FED is a many tenacled monster – mostly because they been under the “cloak of silence” as Maxwell Smart used to say. I think ounce this mushroom is exposed to light of day, we will know it for its uselessness and usury – all for the benefit of a few.
@Pedro – nuts to your thinking re Ron Paul’s motives for an audit. Think about waht the Fed R controls versus RP in his dink shop. There is no comparison.
and FRLVX
Congress absconded their responsibility to manage monetary policy to the fed. It is in the US Constitution that no one no monetary policy except for the Congress!
And now the FedR is a bunch of crybabies! Don’t look at what I’ve done with power IT Should never have had to begin with.
And Barney Frank. Ya you. Shut the fluck up. You have no idea what you are talking about.
I wanted to say that Sir Barney Frank wouldn’t be wobbling his chins if his wasn’t in on the game and just wants to play stupid.
Anyone who resists this audit has a stake in the Fed not being exposed.
And what if the Fed turned up fudging a few accounting entries in the trillions?
Not like we’re all going to roll over and die, lest understand it.
AUDIT THE FED RESERVE. ( that’s my protest sign)